BIRDS IN LEGEND
FABLE AND FOLKLORE
Chapter 1
“When we say, “A little bird told me,” we are talking legend and folklore and superstition all at once. There is an old Basque story of a bird—always a small one in these tales—that tells the truth; and our Biloxi Indians used to say the same of the hummingbird. Breton peasants still credit all birds with the power of using human language on proper occasions, and traditions in all parts of the world agree that every bird had this power once on a time if not now.
“The fireside-tales of the nomads of Oriental deserts or of North American plains and forest alike attest faith in this power; and conversation by and with birds is almost the main stock of the stories heard on our Southern cotton-plantations. You will perhaps recall the bulbul bazar of the Arabian Nights, and, if you please, you may read in another chapter of the conversational pewit and hoopoe of Solomonic fame.
“Biblical authority exists in the confidence of the Prophet Elijah that a “bird of the air … shall tell the matter”; and monkish traditions abound in revelations whispered in the ear of the faithful by winged messengers from divine sources, as you may read further along if you have patience to turn the leaves. The poets keep alive the pretty fiction; and the rest of us resort to the phrase with an arch smile whenever we do not care to quote our authority for repeating some half-secret bit of gossip. “This magical power of understanding birdtalk,” says Halliday,[1][A] “is regularly the way in which the seers of myths obtain their information.” …
“Primitive men—and those we style the Ancients were primitive so far as nature is concerned—regarded birds as supernaturally wise. This canniness is implied in many of the narratives and incidents set down in the succeeding pages; and in view of it birds came to be regarded by early man with great respect, yet also with apprehension, for they might utilize their knowledge to his harm. For example: The Canada jay is believed by the Indians along the northern shore of Hudson Bay to give warning whenever they approach an Eskimo camp—usually, of course, with hostile intent; and naturally those Indians kill that kind of jay whenever they can.
The ability in birds to speak implies knowledge, and Martha Young[2] gives us a view of this logic prevailing among the old-time southern darkies:
‘Sis’ Dove she know mo’n anybody or anything in de worl’. She know pintedly de time anybody gwine die. You’ll hear her moanin’ fer a passin’ soul ’fo’ you hear de bell tone. She know ’fo’ cotton-plantin’ time whe’r de craps dat gatherin’ ’ll be good er bad. ’Fo’ folks breaks up de new groun’ er bust out middles, Sis’ Dove know what de yield ’ll be. She know it an’ she’ll tell it, too. ’Caze ev’ybody know if Sis’ Dove coo on de right han’ of a man plowin’, dare ’ll be a good crap dat year; but ef she coo on de lef’ dar ’ll be a faillery crap dat year.
‘Sis’ Dove she know about all de craps dat grow out er de groun’ but she ’special know about corn, fer she plant de fi’st grain er corn dat ever was plant’ in de whole worl’. Whar she git it?… Umm—hum! You tell me dat!’
From the belief in the intuitive wisdom of birds comes the world-wide confidence in their prophetic power. Hence their actions, often so mysterious, have been watched with intense interest, and everything unusual in their behavior was noticed in the hope that it might express a revelation from on high. Advantage was taken of this pathetic hope and assurance by the Roman augurs in their legalized ornithomancy, of which some description will be found in another chapter. Nine-tenths of it was priestly humbug to keep ordinary folks in mental subjection, as priestcraft has ever sought to do. The remaining tenth has become the basis of the present popular faith in birds’ ability to foretell coming weather. Let me cite a few aboriginal examples of this faith, more or less sincere, in the ability and willingness of birds to warn inquiring humanity.
Whippoorwill – god of night
The Omahas and other Siouan Indians used to say that when whippoorwills sing at night, saying “Hoia, hohin?” one replies “No.” If the birds stop at once, it is a sign that the answerer will soon die, but if the birds keep on calling he or she will live a long time. The Utes of Colorado, however, declare that this bird is the god of the night, and that it made the moon by magic, transforming a frog into it; while the Iroquois indulged in the pretty fancy that the moccasin-flowers (cypripediums) are whippoorwills’ shoes.
“This is a little astray from my present theme, to which we may return by quoting from Waterton[73] that if one of the related goatsuckers of the Amazon Valley be heard close to an Indian’s or a negro’s hut, from that night evil fortune sits brooding over it. In Costa Rica bones of whippoorwills are dried and ground to a fine powder by the Indians when they want to concoct a charm against some enemy; mixed with tobacco it will form a cigarette believed to cause certain death to the person smoking it.
“To the mountaineers of the southern Alleghanies the whippoorwill reveals how long it will be before marriage—as many years as its notes are repeated: as I have heard the bird reiterate its cry more than 800 times without taking breath, this must often be a discouraging report to an anxious maid or bachelor. One often hears it said lightly in New England that a whippoorwill calling very near a house portends death, but I can get no evidence that this “sign” is really attended to anywhere in the northern United States.
Owls
“This, and the equally nocturnal screech-owl (against which the darkies have many “conjurings”) are not the only birds feared by rural folk in the Southern States, especially in the mountains. A child in a family of Georgia “crackers” fell ill, and his mother gave this account of it to a sympathetic friend:
‘Mikey is bound to die. I’ve know’d it all along. All las’ week the moanin’ doves was comin’ roun’ the house, and this mornin’ one come in at the window right by Mikey’s head, an’ cooed an’ moaned. I couldn’t scare it away, else a witch would ’a’ put a spell on me.
‘Mikey lived to become a drunkard, is the unfeeling comment of the reporter of this touching incident in The Journal of American Folklore
“One constantly hears by day the note of the limócon, a wood-pigeon which exercises a most extraordinary interest over the lives of many of the wild people, for they believe that the direction and nature of its notes augur good or ill for the enterprises they have in hand.” This memorandum, in Dean Worcester’s valuable book on the Philippines,[3] is apt to the purpose of this introductory chapter, leading me to say that the continuing reader will find doves (which are much the same in all parts of the world) conspicuous in legend, fable and ceremony; also that the “direction and nature” of their voices, as heard, is one of the most important elements in the consideration of birds in general as messengers and prophets—functions to which I shall often have occasion to refer, and on which are founded the ancient systems of bird-divination.
“In these United States little superstition relating to animals has survived, partly because the wild creatures here were strange to the pioneers, who were poorly acquainted with their characteristics, but mainly because such fears and fancies were left in the Old World with other rubbish not worth the freight-charges; yet a few quaint notions came along, like small heirlooms of no particular value that folks dislike to throw away until they must. Almost all such mental keepsakes belong to people in the backward parts of the country, often with an ill-fitting application to local birds. A conspicuous disappearance is that venerable body of forebodings and fancies attached to the European cuckoo, totally unknown or disregarded here, because our American cuckoos have 8no such irregular habits as gave rise to the myths and superstitions clustering about that bird in Europe.
“We saw a moment ago that the negro farmer estimated what the yield of his field would be by the direction from which the dove’s message came to his ears. I have another note that if one hears the first mourning-dove of the year above him he will prosper: if from below him his own course henceforth will be down hill.
“This matter of direction whence (and also of number) is of vital importance in interpreting bird-prophecy the world over, as will be fully shown in a subsequent chapter. Even in parts of New England it is counted “unlucky” to see two crows together flying toward the left—a plain borrowing from the magpie-lore of Old England. In the South it is thought that if two quails fly up in front of a man on the way to conclude a bargain he will do well to abandon the intended business. Break up a killdeer’s nest and you will soon break a leg or arm—and so on.
‘There always have been persons who were much disturbed when a bird fluttered against a closed window. A rooster crowing into an open house-door foretells a visitor. The plantation darkies of our Southern States believe that when shy forest-birds come close about a dwelling as if frightened, or, wandering within it, beat their wings wildly in search of an exit, so some soul will flutteringly seek escape from that house—and “right soon.” Similar fears afflict the timid on the other side of the globe. On the contrary, and more naturally, it is esteemed among us an excellent omen when wild birds nest fearlessly about a negro’s or a mountaineer’s cabin.
“When a Georgia girl first hears in the spring the plaintive call of returning doves she must immediately attend [pg. 9] to it if she is curious as to her future partner in life. She must at once take nine steps forward and nine backward, then take off her right shoe: in it she will discover a hair of the man she is to marry—but how to find its owner is not explained! This bit of rustic divination is plainly transferred from the old English formula toward the first-heard cuckoo, as may be learned from Gay’s The Shepherd’s Week,[8] which is a treasury of rustic customs in Britain long ago. Says one of the maids:
“Now the idea underlying all this faith in the supernatural wisdom and prophetic gift in birds is the general supposition that they are spirits, or, at any rate, possessed by spirits, a doctrine that appears in various guises but is universal in the world of primitive culture—a world nearer to us sophisticated readers than perhaps we realize: but a good many little children inhabit it, even within our doors.
“The primitive mind,” as Dr. Brinton asserts, “did not recognize any deep distinction between the lower animals and man”; and continues:
‘The savage knew that the beast was his superior in many points, in craft and in strength, in fleetness and intuition, and he regarded it with respect. To him the brute had a soul not inferior to his own, and a language which the wise among men might on occasion learn…. Therefore with wide unanimity he placed certain species of animals nearer to God than is man himself, or even identified them with the manifestations of the Highest.
‘None was in this respect a greater favorite than the bird. Its soaring flight, its strange or sweet notes, the marked hues of its plumage, combined to render it a fit emblem of power and beauty. The Dyaks of Borneo trace their descent to Singalang Burong, the god of birds; and birds as the ancestors of the totemic family are extremely common among the American Indians. The Eskimos say that they have the faculty of soul or life beyond all other creatures, and in most primitive tribes they have been regarded as the messengers of the divine, and the special purveyors of the vital principles … and everywhere to be able to understand the language of birds was equivalent to being able to converse with the gods.[4]
[4. Brinton, Daniel G. The Religions of Primitive Peoples. (New York, 1897.)]
“If this is true it is not surprising that savages in various parts of the world trace their tribal origin to a supernatural bird of the same form and name as some familiar [pg. 11] local species, which was inhabited by the soul of their heroic ‘first man.’ The Osage Indians of Kansas, for example, say that as far back as they can conceive of time their ancestors were alive, but had neither bodies nor souls. They existed beneath the lowest of the four ‘upper worlds,’ and at last migrated to the highest, where they obtained souls. Then followed travels in which they searched for some source whence they might get human bodies, and at last asked the question of a redbird sitting on her nest. She replied: “I can cause your children to have human bodies from my own.” She explained that her wings would be their arms, her head their head, and so on through a long list of parts, external and internal, showing herself a good comparative anatomist. Finally she declared: “The speech (or breath) of children will I bestow on your children.”[5]
][. Dorsey, J. Owen. Report U. S. Bureau of Ethnology, 1884–5. (Washington, 1888.)]
Mankind Evolved from Birds
“Such is the story of how humanity reached the earth, according to one branch of the Osages: other gentes also believe themselves descended from birds that came down from an upper world. Dozens of similar cases might be quoted, of which I will select one because of its curious features. The Seri, an exclusive and backward tribe inhabiting the desert-like island Tiburon, in the Gulf of California, ascribe the creation of the world, and of themselves in particular, to the Ancient of Pelicans, a mythical fowl of supernal wisdom and melodious song—an unexpected poetic touch!—who first raised the earth above the primeval waters. This last point is in conformity with the general belief that a waste of waters preceded the appearance, by one or another miraculous means well within the redman’s range of experience, of a bit of land; and it is to be observed that this original patch of earth, whether fixed or floating, was enlarged 12to habitable dimensions not by further miracles, nor by natural accretion, but, as a rule, by the labor and ingenuity of the “first men” themselves, usually aided by favorite animals. Thus the Seri Indians naturally held the pelican in especial regard, but that did not prevent their utilizing it to the utmost. Dr. W. J. McGee[6] found that one of their customs was to tie a broken-winged, living pelican to a stake near the seashore, and then appropriate the fishes brought to the captive by its free relatives.
In fewer cases we find that not only tribal but also individual origin is ascribed to a bird, the best illustration of which is the notion of the natives of Perak, in the Malay Peninsula, that a bird brings the soul to every person at birth. A woman who is about to become a mother selects as the place where her baby shall be born the foot of a certain tree—any one that appeals to her fancy—and this will be the “name-tree” of her child. The parents believe that a soul has been waiting for this child in the form of a bird that for some time before the birth frequents all the trees of the chosen kind in that vicinity, searching for the occasion when it may deliver its charge, intrusted to it by Kari, the tribal god. This bird must be killed and eaten by the expectant mother just before the actual birth or the baby will never come to life, or if it does will speedily die. A poetic feature in this tender explanation of the mystery of life among the jungle-dwellers is that the souls of first-born children are brought always by the newly hatched offspring of the bird that contained the soul of the mother of the child.[7]
Birds Are Spirit Animals
“Apart from this singular conception of the source of existence, the general theory of spirituality in birds is 13based, as heretofore intimated, on the almost universal belief that they are often the visible spirits of the dead. The Powhatans of Virginia, for example, held that the feathered race received the souls of their chiefs at death; and a California tribe asserted that the small birds whose hard luck it was to receive the souls of bad men were chased and destroyed by hawks, so that those of good Indians alone reached the happy hunting-grounds beyond the sky.
“James G. Swan relates in his interesting old book about early days at Puget Sound,[10] that the Indians at Shoalwater Bay, Oregon, were much disturbed one morning because they had heard the whistling of a plover in the night. The white men there told them it was only a bird’s crying, but they insisted the noise was that of spirits. Said they: “Birds don’t talk in the night; they talk in the daytime.” “But,” asked Russell, “how can you tell that it is the memelose tillicums, or dead people? They can’t talk.” “No,” replied the savage, “it is true they can’t talk as we do, but they whistle through their teeth. You are a white man and do not understand what they say, but Indians know.”
‘This bit of untainted savage philosophy recalls the queer British superstition of the Seven Whistlers. Wordsworth, who was a North-countryman, records of his ancient Dalesman—
And counted them.’…
Kingfishers
“The distinction I try to make between the mythical and the legendary or real, may be illustrated by the kingfisher—in this case, of course, the common species of southern Europe. Let us consider first the mythical side. Alcyone, daughter of Æolus, the wind-god, impelled by love for her husband Ceyx, whom she found dead on the shore after a shipwreck, threw herself into the sea. The gods, rewarding their conjugal love, changed the pair into kingfishers. What connection exists between this, which is simply a classic yarn, and the ancient theory of the nidification of this species, I do not know; but the story was—now we are talking of the real bird, which the Greeks and Latins saw daily—that the kingfisher hatched its eggs at the time of the winter solstice in a nest shaped like a hollow sponge, and thought to be [pg. 21] solidly composed of fish-bones, which was set afloat, or at any rate floated, on the surface of the Mediterranean. The natural query how such a structure could survive the shock of waves led to the theory that Father Æolus made the winds “behave” during the brooding-time. As Pliny explains: “For seven days before the winter solstice, and for the same length of time after it, the sea becomes calm in order that the kingfishers may rear their young.” Simonides, Plutarch, and many other classic authorities, testify to the same tradition, which seems to have belonged particularly to the waters about Sicily. More recent writers kept alive the tender conceit.
Woodpecker
Wren
Crow
Mountain Bluebird – The Rising Sun
“The Navahos regard the mountain bluebird as sacred on account of its azure plumage, which (as something blue) is representative of the South; and it is deemed the herald of the rising sun, which is their supreme image of God. One of their old men told Stewart Culin that “two blue birds stand at the door of the house in which [certain] gods dwell.” …
CHAPTER IV
THE FOLKLORE OF BIRD MIGRATION
“Bird-students are well aware that certain ducks that nest in trees, and such marine birds as guillemots breeding on sea-fronting cliffs, sometimes carry down their young from these lofty birth-places by balancing them on their backs; also that it is a common thing to see water-fowls, especially grebes and swans, swimming about with a lot of little ones on deck, that is, on the broad maternal back.
Large Birds Carry Small Birds on Their Backs
“These facts prepare us somewhat for examining the widely credited assertion that various large birds of powerful flight transport small birds on their semiannual migrations—a speculation accepted since classic times, or before them. In Deuteronomy, xxxii, II, we read: “As the eagle fluttereth over her young, spreadeth abroad her wings, taketh them, beareth them on her wings,” etc. 83Modern ornithologists scout the notion. Thus Alfred Newton[55] refers to it in a scornful way, but admits that it is the conviction not only of Egyptian peasants but of Siberian Tartars, who assured the ornithologist Gmelin, in 1740, that in autumn storks and cranes carried southward on their backs all the Siberian corncrakes. In a Gaelic folk-tale of Cathal O’Couchan a falcon, knowing that the wren of the story has a long way to go, says: “Spring up between my wings, and no other bird will touch thee till thou reach home.” …
“The Bedouin,” Ebeling relates, “turned to me with a mixture of French and Arabic as follows: ‘Do you not know, noble sir, that these small birds are borne over the sea by the larger ones?’”
I laughed, but the old man continued quite naturally:
“Every child among us knows that. Those little birds are much too weak to make the long sea-journey with their own strength. This they know very well, and therefore wait for the storks and cranes and other large birds, and settle themselves upon their backs. In this way they 84allow themselves to be borne over the sea. The large birds submit to it willingly, for they like their little guests who by their merry twitterings help to kill the time on the long voyage.”…
“A Swedish traveller, Hedenborg, is quoted by August Petermann, the geographer, as stating that in autumn on the Island of Rhodes, in the Ægean Sea, when the storks came in flocks across the water he often heard birds singing that he was unable to discover. “Once he followed a flock of storks, and as they alighted he saw small birds fly up from their backs.”
“There was published in London in 1875 a book entitled Bible Lands and Bible Customs, the author of which was the Rev. Henry J. Van Lennep, D.D. Dr. Lennep informs his readers that many small birds are unable to fly across the Mediterranean, “and to meet such cases the crane has been provided…. In the autumn numerous flocks may be seen coming from the north … flying low and circling over the plains. Little birds of various species may then be seen flying up to them, while the twittering songs of those comfortably settled on their backs may then be distinctly heard.” (Quoted in Nature, March 24, 1881). We may smile at the good man’s faith [pg. 85] that God “provided” big birds as carriers for little ones—especially as we know that the weakest warblers are able to cross from Europe to Africa; but other equally modern and more matter-of-fact testimony comes from the same quarter of the world. In The Evening Post, of New York City, dated November 20, 1880, a long letter appeared on this topic, written by an anonymous correspondent who gave his own similar experience in Crete in the autumn of 1878, part of which reads:
“On several occasions the village priest—a friendly Greek with whom I spent the greater part of my time—directed my attention to the twittering and singing of small birds which he distinctly heard when a flock of sand-cranes passed by on their southward journey. I told my friend that I could not see any small birds, and suggested that the noise came from the wings of the large ones. This he denied, saying ‘No, no! I know it is the chirping of small birds. They are on the backs of the cranes. I have seen them frequently fly up and alight again, and they are always with them when they stop to rest and feed.’ I was still sceptical, for with the aid of a field-glass I failed to discover the ‘small birds’ spoken of. I inquired of several others and found the existence of these little feathered companions to be a matter of general belief. ‘They come over from Europe with them.’ One day, while fishing about fifteen miles from shore, a flock of cranes passed quite near the yacht. The fishermen, hearing the ‘small birds,’ drew my attention to their chirping. Presently one cried out, ‘There’s one!’ but I failed to catch sight of it, whereupon one of the men discharged his flintlock. Three small birds rose up from the flock and soon disappeared among the cranes.”
This letter, despite its column-length and its anonymity, was copied in full by that highly scientific journal Nature, of London, and this immediately brought out a note from John Rae, one of the wisest explorers of northwestern Canada, who related (Nature, March 3, 1881) that it was the general belief among the Maskegan (Cree) 86Indians dwelling along the southwestern shore of Hudson Bay that “a small bird, one of the Fringillidae, performs its northward migration in spring on the back of the Canada goose. These geese reach Hudson Bay about the last of April, and the Indians state that when they are fired at little birds are seen flying away from them.” Mr. Rae adds: “An intelligent, truthful and educated Indian, named George Rivers … assured me that he had witnessed this, and I believe I once saw it occur.”
Almost simultaneously Forest and Stream (New York, March 10, 1881) printed a communication from J. C. Merrill of Fort Custer, Montana, alleging “a general belief among the Crow Indians of Montana that the sandhill crane performs the same office for a bird they call napite-shu-utl, or crane’s back.” Mr. Merrill continued:
“This bird I have not seen, but from the description it is probably a small grebe. It is ‘big medicine’ and when obtained is rudely stuffed and carefully preserved…. About ten or fifteen per cent of cranes are accompanied by the ‘crane-back,’ which, as the crane rises from the ground, flutters up and settles on the back between the wings, remaining there until the crane alights. Such is the Indian account, and many of their hunters and chiefs have assured me that they have frequently seen the birds carried off in this way. At these times the bird is said to keep up a constant chattering whistle, which is the origin of the custom of the Crow warriors going out to battle, each with a small bone whistle in his mouth; this is continually blown, imitating the notes of the ‘crane’s-back,’ and, as they believe, preserves their ponies and themselves from wounds, so that in case of defeat they may be safely carried away as is the napite-shu-utl.
“The Cree Indians are said to observe the same habit in the white crane.”
Now there is no good reason to deny the honesty or sneer at the value of these widely distributed observations [pg. 87] so long as they are regarded as descriptive of exceptions and not of a rule of migration. Neither the observers nor the reporters had any motive for deception, and are not likely to deceive themselves in every case—moreover, new witnesses continually arise. For example: Mr. E. Hagland, of Therien, Alberta, wrote to me as follows in a casual way, without any prompting, in April, 1919:
“One fall a flock of cranes passed over me flying very low, and apart from their squawking I could distinctly hear the twittering of small birds, sparrows of some kind. The chirping grew louder as the cranes drew towards me, and grew fainter as they drew away; and as the cranes were the only birds in sight I concluded that little birds were taking a free ride to the south.”
The manner of flight of sandhill cranes as described by Dr. Elliott Coues[50] suggests why they might well be utilized as common carriers by small birds going their way. “Such ponderous bodies, moving with slowly beating wings, give a great idea of momentum from mere weight … for they plod along heavily, seeming to need every inch of their ample wings to sustain themselves.” This would make it easy and tempting for a tired little migrant to rest its feet on the crane’s broad back—and once settled there, why not stay?
The flaw in this whole matter is the unwarranted inference made by the Bedouins who talked with Herr Ebling, and by wiser persons, namely, that all the wagtails and other little birds annually perform their overseas journeys by aid of stronger-winged friends. That is reasoning from some to all, which is bad logic. It is as if a stranger in town noticed a few schoolboys hopping on the back of a wagon, and immediately noted down that in Pequaket boys in general rode to school on the tailboards 88of farm-wagons. Little birds, like small boys, have sense enough in their migrations to utilize a convenience when it is going their way—in other words a very few lucky ones each year manage to “steal a ride.”
“Thus far we have been dealing with a matter pretty close to actual ornithology; but it is only within recent years that study has made clear to us “the way of an eagle in the air,” which, as a symbol of the semiannual movement of bird-hosts, was such a mystery to our forefathers. They imagined many quaint explanations, often no more sensible than the theory of the Ojibway Indians, who say that once bird-folk played ball with the North Wind. The latter won the game, and those kinds of birds who were on his side now stay in the North all winter, while those of the defeated side are obliged to flee southward every autumn, as their ancestors did at the end of the great ball-game.
“Sir Walter Scott recalls in one of his novels the fond conceit of the little nuns in the abbey of Whitby, on the Northumberland coast, that the wee immigrants arriving there after their flight across the North Sea fluttered to earth not in weariness of wings but to do homage to Hilda, their saintly abbess. That was fifteen long centuries ago; but the story is true, for you may still see the ruins, at least, of Hilda’s abbey, and still, spring by spring, do tired birds pause beside it as if to pay their devotions.
“Much less pleasant is the dread inspired in the hearts of those who listen to the Seven Whistlers. Formerly no Leicestershire miner would go down into a pit, after hearing them, until a little time had elapsed, taking the sounds as a warning that an accident was impending; and doubtless coincident mishaps occurred often enough to confirm [pg. 89] faith in the presentiment. Level-headed men knew well enough what the Seven Whistlers were—“it’s them long-billed curlews, but I never likes to hear ’em,” said one. The northern name of these birds is “whimbrel,” a form of the English whimperer. As these curlews when migrating often travel low on dark nights, and are unseen, it is not strange that their unearthly cries should chill the imagination of the superstitious, and that the Scotch should call them “corpse-hounds.” “Gabble retchet” is another Scotch term; and probably the Irish banshee had a similar origin. Still another name is “Gabriel hounds,” originating, it is thought in Scandinavia, and explained by the fact that there the calling to one another of bean-geese in their nocturnal journeys, in spring, have a singular resemblance to the yelping of beagles; and the story is that Gabriel is obliged to follow his spectral pack, said to be human-headed, high in the dark air, as a punishment for having once hunted on Sunday.
“Wordsworth in one of his sonnets connects this belief with the German legend of the Wild Huntsman, “doomed the flying hart to chase forever on aërial grounds.” A Lancashire explanation, quoted by Moncure D. Conway is that these migrants, there deemed to be plovers, were “Wandering Jews,” so called because they contained the souls of Jews who assisted at the Crucifixion, and in consequence were condemned to float in the air forever. A curious coincidence, given by Skeat,[7] is that the Malays have an elaborate story of a spectral huntsman, and hear him in the nocturnal notes of the birikbirik, a nightjar.
“It is hardly more than a century ago that intelligent men abandoned the belief that certain birds hibernated in hollow trees, caverns, or even buried themselves every autumn in the mud at the bottom of ponds, and then recovered [pg. 90] in the spring. This theory is of great antiquity, and was applied especially to the swallows, swifts, nightingales and corncrakes of the Mediterranean region; but even Aristotle doubted whether it was true of all birds. He discusses at some length in his Natural History[41] the winter retreat of fishes and other creatures that hibernate, and continues:
“Many kinds of birds also conceal themselves, and they do not all, as some suppose, migrate to warmer climes … and many swallows have been seen in hollow places almost stripped of feathers; and kites, when they first showed themselves, have come from similar situations…. Some of the doves conceal themselves; others do not, but migrate along with the swallows. The thrush and the starling also conceal themselves.”
I have an unverified memorandum from the pen of Antonio Galvano, who resided in Mexico, long ago, that in his time hummingbirds “live of the dew, and the juyce of flowers and roses. They die or sleepe every yeere in the moneth of October, sitting upon a little bough in a warme and close place: they revive or wake againe in the moneth of April after that the flowers be sprung, and therefore they call them the revived birds.”
Even Gilbert White,[45] was inclined to think hibernation might be true, at least of British swallows; and Cowper sings—
Alexander Wilson[46] thought it necessary to combat vigorously the same fiction then persistent among Pennsylvania farmers, and did so at length in his American Ornithology published in 1808.
“But the wildest hypothesis was the one prevalent in the 91Middle Ages and alluded to by Dryden in his poem The Hind and The Panther, speaking of young swallows in autumn:
Or as Gay’s shepherd surmises:[8]
Birds Fly to the Moon
A quaint theological justification of this theory that birds fly to the moon as a winter-resort is to be found in Volume VI of The Harleian Miscellany. It is entitled “An Inquiry into the Physical and Literal Sense of the Scriptures,” and is an exegesis of Jeremiah viii, 7: “The stork in the heaven knoweth her appointed time, and the turtle and the crane and the swallow observe the time of their coming.” The reverend commentator, whose name is lost, begins at once to explain migration among birds. He first assures his readers that many birds, including storks, often fly on migration at a height that renders them indiscernible. Now, he argues, if the flight of storks had been in a horizontal direction flocks of birds would have been seen frequently by travellers—ignoring the fact that they are and always have been observed. But, he goes on, as the flight is not horizontal it [pg. 92] must be perpendicular to the surface of the earth, and, therefore, it becomes clear that the moon would be the first resting-place the birds would be likely to strike, whereupon he draws this conclusion: “Therefore the stork, and the same may be said of other season-observing birds, till some place more fit can be assigned to them, does go unto, and remain in some one of the celestial bodies; and that must be the moon, which is most likely because nearest, and bearing most relation to this our earth, as appears in the Copernican scheme; yet is the distance great enough to denominate the passage thither an itineration or journey.”
“The author next clinches the matter by taking the time that the stork is absent from its nesting-place, and showing how it is utilized. Two months are occupied in the upward flight, three for rest and refreshment, and two more for the return passage. Thus this ingenious writer lays what he considers a solid scientific foundation beneath an ancient and vague theory.
Birds Transformed Into Other Birds
“The sudden vanishing of some migratory birds while others resembling them remained in view gave to ancient ignorance—not yet altogether dissipated, even in these United States—the belief that a bird might change into the form of another. The difference noticed in plumage in some species in summer and winter was accounted for in the same way, as many old Greek myths illustrate. Thus Sophocles, trying in one of his dramas to explain an inconsistency between two versions of the myth of Tereus, declares that the hoopoe of the older story is the hawk of the newer one—the birds were altered, not the narrative. He was easily believed, for to the Greeks of his day it appeared plain that birds might become transformed into others birds. Aristotle took great pains to [pg. 93] show the absurdity of this notion, yet it has held on. Swann tells of an Englishman who declared that it was well-known that sparrow-hawks changed into cuckoos in spring; and another old belief is that the European land-rail becomes in winter the water-rail, resuming its own form in spring. A French name for the land-rail, by the way, is “king of the quails,” because the quails chose it as leader in their migrations.
Quails
“One of the most picturesque incidents in the story of the wilderness-roving of the Children of Israel, who were “murmuring” for the fleshpots of Egypt, is the sudden coming of quails that “filled the camp.” The interpretation is plain that a migratory host of these birds had settled for the night where the Hebrews, or some of them, were; and the notable point is their abundance, and that they had disappeared when morning came, which is characteristic. These quails visit Europe in summer in prodigious numbers from south of the Mediterranean, and are netted for market by tens of thousands. It is said that in old times the bishops of Capri—Italy receives the greatest flight—derived a large part of their wealth from a tax on the catching of quails. Pliny alleges, as an example of the immense migrations of these quails in his time, that often, always at night, they settled on the sails of ships and so sank them. This really seems possible when one thinks of the small size of the “ships” of that period, and recalls that flights of our own migrating pigeons (now extinct) used to smash down stout branches of trees by the weight of the crowds of birds that settled on them.
Cranes
“Cranes are birds of striking characteristics, as we have seen, and seem to have impressed very forcibly the ancient Greeks as well as recent Orientals, the latter finding in [pg. 94] them an extraordinary symbolism.
The Greeks believed that during their winter absence the cranes were in constant battle with the Pygmies—“That small infantry warred on by cranes,” as Milton characterized those diminutive, but pugnacious folks who lived no one knew exactly where, but certainly at the ends of the earth. “The cranes travel,” Aristotle records, “from Scythia to the marshes in the higher parts of Egypt from which the Nile originates. This is the place where the Pygmies dwell; and this is no fable, for there is really, it is said, a race of dwarfs, both men and horses, which lead the life of troglodytes.”
Ravens and Crows
Discover more from Jacki Kellum
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.